Will Their Names Be Called?

Jeff Hatch, Jim Finn, Rob Milanese, Vince Alexander.

To Penn football fans, those four names represent arguably the only dream bigger than winning an Ivy League Championship -- playing in the National Football League.

This weekend, another Penn player may have his name added to that illustrious list as the 2004 NFL Draft takes place at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Among the possibilities this year are kicker Peter Veldman, quarterback and 2003 Ivy League Player of the Year Mike Mitchell and offensive linemen Chris Clark, Michael Powers and Ben Noll.

Penn strength coach Rob Wagner, whose Franklin Field office bustled yesterday with the sounds of athletes in offseason training, has watched many Penn football players come and go. He was not particularly optimistic about this year's crop, but said that "there's always a possibility that someone sees what they think is a diamond in the rough."

There may, however, be diamonds in the rough at Harvard and Yale. Crimson linebacker Dante Balestracci and Elis tight end Nate Lawrie have both been mentioned as potential late-round picks.

Harvard coach Tim Murphy is confident about the future of Balestracci, who won the Gridiron Club of Boston's Lowe Award as the best defensive collegiate player in New England.

"He's been a tremendously productive college football player at a high level," Murphy said.

Balestracci may end up following in the footsteps of the man whose Crimson records he broke -- Isaiah Kacyvenski, Harvard's starting middle linebacker before Balestracci came to Boston. Kacyvenski is now the Seattle Seahawks' backup linebacker and sees considerable minutes in games.

Balestracci "just stepped right in and filled his shoes," Murphy said. "Obviously the comparisons are there."

Lawrie had considerable expectations on his wide shoulders coming into his senior season in New Haven, Conn., and Elis coach Jack Siedlecki believes he "lived up to the billing."

Lawrie was invited to play in the annual Blue-Gray All-Star game in Mobile, Ala. -- the second time Siedlecki has sent a player to that game.

"He meets all [the] criteria in terms of the physical attributes they are looking for," Siedlecki said. "He's 6-foot-7, he's 265 pounds, he ran a 4.8 [second 40-yard dash] when he ran out in Indianapolis."

Lawrie is in fact originally from Indianapolis, and Siedlecki said, "I'm sure that he'd like to play for the Colts, but I don't think that it's a big deal."

To Wagner, an Ivy League player's statistics in training are not the most important part of his potential as a professional.

"I think what the NFL can assume about Ivy League players is that they know they are going to get a fairly smart player -- I don't mean to say that in a smug way, but it's the truth," he said. "They look for someone like a Jeff Hatch who may not necessarily have stood out, been a huge player in an Ivy League, but they saw an upside to him."

Hatch, who played offensive tackle for the New York Giants until last year, played for Penn from 1999-2001.

"He had the size, he had the athletic ability and they knew he'd be able to pick up the system," Wagner said.

According to Wagner, scouts usually start identifying potential NFL talent in a player's junior year of college. This year, Penn wide receiver Dan Castles and defensive back Duvol Thompson will be scouted by the Eagles next week, and the report will make its way across the country to other teams shortly thereafter.

Whether or not it is by coincidence, a number of Penn players over the last few years have spent time with NFL teams in the Northeast. But Wagner calls this "a chicken-or-egg-type question."

"We've had kids picked up by San Francisco, we've had kids picked up by Cleveland," Wagner said. "I think it really depends on what the team's needs are at that point in time and how [players] play to meet those needs."

Photos from left to right: Bill Wells/DP File Photo; Mark Washburn/Courtesy Dartmouth Athletics; Courtesy Yale Athletics; Mary Kinosian/DP File Photo; David E. Stein/The Harvard Crimson; Ben Rosenau/DP File Photo

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